'Flatliners' trailer: Ellen Page and Diego Luna learn to live by dying

It’s not clear if anyone really wanted a remake of Flatliners — as Brat Pack-era thrillers go, Joel Schumacher’s glossy 1990 hit (starring Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, William Baldwin, and Oliver Platt) handled its what’s-on-the-other-side supernatural premise with adequate aplomb. But in Hollywood, as in the film itself, nothing stays dead forever. Thus, we’ll soon be treated to a new group of young medical students intent on searching for the afterlife at great personal risk, courtesy of director Niels Arden Oplev and star Ellen Page — and following up its first promo, the upcoming sci-fi work has just debuted its second theatrical trailer (watch it above).

Taking a far more oblique approach than its predecessor, this new Flatliners spot proceeds with a pulsating rhythm that’s meant to suggest an ever-faster heartbeat, all set to images that hint at the story’s premise. That plot focuses on a group of young medical daredevils who devise a way to kill and then resuscitate themselves so they can take a peek at where we go after death. As one might expect, those answers are at first exhilarating and then, well, far less so, although at least for now, most of the horrors that await these characters — played by Diego Luna, Nina Dobrev, James Norton, and Kiersey Clemons — are being withheld in favor of suggestive CGI flights in and around various environments.

Whether director Oplev (best known for helming the original Swedish-language version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) can breathe new life into this familiar story will be known soon enough, as Flatliners bursts into theaters on Sept. 29.